User talk:Green Lemur

Welcome

Green Lemur, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these!

• Wikinews:Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
• Wikinews:Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced

Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews:

• Wikinews:Introduction - overview of the site
• Wikinews:Writing an article - how to write and publish a complete article
• Wikinews:Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
• Wikinews:Contents - the contents page.

There are always things to do on Wikinews:

• Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
• The front page lead articles often need updating
• Developing stories need finishing and publishing
• Discussions need your input
• If you're interested in audio recordings, Audio Wikinews could always use more contributers
• And of course, stories need writing!

By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! — Doldrums(talk) 05:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Philippines article

thanks for contributing to Wikinews. just wanted to let u know once more that Wikinews takes the neutrality of its articles very seriously. pls do make an effort to ensure that an article meets the NPOV guidelines before publishing it. similarly, when a cleanup notice is placed on an article, do make an effort to address the issues raised or discuss them on the article talk page. republishing a disputed article without addressing the issues raised is not a good thing to do. as for the issues in the article, the most serious is that the article reports very serious allegations but fails to give the military an adequate opportunity to respond. for example, article reports the allegation that the military is responsible for killings. has the military accepted the responsibility? do they reject the accusation and blame somebody else? what they say in their defence needs to be reported to make the article more neutral. i look forward to seeing more news reported, and reported well, from the region, best — Doldrums(talk) 06:12, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I have attached several sources to address your issues. Thanks for taking this seriously. Kgargar 06:55, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

republishing

pls do not repeatedly publish a disputed article without addressing the issues raised. it is considered edit-warring and can become a violation of the three revert rule, something that can get a user blocked from editing Wikinews.  — Doldrums(talk) 09:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You have been blocked from Wikinews for 3RR violation. If you believe this block is unjustified or wish to contest it, you may add {{unblock|your reason}} to this page, go to Wikinews IRC to request to be unblocked, or send a message to wikinews-l wikimedia ● org.

Your violation of the three revert rule has got you blocked. Please work together with other users in a constructive fashion, and listen to what people are saying to you.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:08, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --Kgargar 23:50, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

checking for Copyright infringement

anyone can check and raise an alert if they have a reason to believe that a Wikinews article infringes on the copyright of another source. administrators have the ability to delete (not just blank or add a copyvio notice) an article they think is a copyvio.

While judging whether copyright is violated is very easy in some cases (in a "blatant copyvio", text is cut-paste from (or is very similar to) a source which carries a clear copyright notice), very hard in some cases (it needed judges to decide whether Google news violated the copyrights of some Belgian news sources), in other cases, it falls in-between and Wikinews users need to make a call on the issue. Things to note while making this call is

1. copyright statement on source - does it reserve all rights, some rights or releases all rights?
2. nature of duplication - information cannot be copyrighted, only the organisation or expression of information can be copyrighted. so a wikinews article which reports substantially the same information as a source, but is organised and expressed independent of the source may not be a copyvio.
3. license compatibility means that all the rights wikinews releases shld also be released by the source.
4. Wikinews articles are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. it allows others to copy and use Wikinews articles, even for commercial purposes. so if we use material from another source, then that source too, shld be willing to let anyone use their work (via the Wikinews article) even for commercial use - many sources do not agree to this and make it clear in their copyright license.

Wikinews users are not legal experts and may not always make the right call on these matters, what they try to do is the "safe" thing, if it looks like it might be a copyvio, they point it out so that the article can be rewritten or modified(by using more sources, for eg.) to ensure that it will no longer be a copyvio. if it not modified, they delete the article to play safe. this is because other publishers can take Wikinews to court and extract large damages if a copyright infringement occurs. we want to do everything we can to avoid such a possibility.

if u believe that a particular article is wrongly tagged or deleted as a copyvio, u can identify which one and i or other users can better explain for that particular case. for wikinews policies and general information on copyrights, see Wikinews:Copyright, w:Wikipedia:Copyright and W:Copyright infringement. see also links to Fair Use in these.  — Doldrums(talk) 07:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)